Revealed: Premier League’s £100,000 ‘freebies’ operation to target cabinet and MPs amid battle over new regulator
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/oct/05/revealed-premier-leagues-100000-freebies-operation-to-target-cabinet-and-mps-amid-battle-over-new-regulator
Posted by potpan0
9 Comments
> Clive Betts, the Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on football, said the giveaways were “clearly part of a campaign”. He said: “I don’t think they can influence the regulator being set up, but they can influence what powers it has.”
Strange, I was told that Premier League clubs were just giving away thousands of pounds in donations and ‘freebies’ out of the goodness of their heart, and that they had absolutely no interest in influencing the government whatsoever.
> The Labour MP Huq said she had accepted an invitation to the Brit awards and had been shocked afterwards when told of the value in order to disclose it on her register of interests.
> She said: “It seems odd in the feverish run-up to increased football regulation that the Premier League are offering tickets outside their usual remit of football.”
‘odd’ is one way to describe it. I do wonder sometimes whether our MPs are genuinely this naive, or whether they think we are.
But but I was told that for security reasons, Keir Starmer _had_ to accept the freebies to watch Arsenal games in person, and the donations have _nothing_ to do with the election at all!
/s
Seriously how the blue flying fuck is this not outright breach of bribery and corruption law by all parties involved???
https://www.globallegalinsights.com/practice-areas/bribery-and-corruption-laws-and-regulations/united-kingdom/#:~:text=The%20main%20legislation%20in%20the,bribing%20a%20foreign%20public%20official.
Maybe I’m just a simpleton, but if an MP were to think about the potential reaction to what they were doing, and then act accordingly, these issues would disappear.
Obviously, they don’t, and that’s probably because we’re not in their club, so they feel above our opinions. They’re always “surprised” and “shocked” on the odd occasions when our world forces its way into theirs.
Starmer’s in real trouble if he’s got the Guardian going after his government as well! What a shambles.
Sounds like bribery to me. Find the people who organised such an operation and arrest them all.
Why does the premier league need a regulator. It’s the best football league in the world thanks to the government not meddling in it unlike other European leagues.
If you look down the list of donations pretty much every Taylor Swift ticket gift came from “The FA”. I wondered why that might be.
Labour is not giving a good showing after they spent all that time criticising the corruption of the Tories.